Former SC Democratic party chair Dick Harpootlian told MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki Sunday Vice President Joe Biden’s consideration of a presidential run actually gives Democrats the best chance of retaining the White House in 2016. Harpootlian said Hillary Clinton’s track record will cause her and the Democrats to “die a death of a thousand cuts,” yet Biden is “an inspirational figure” that voters can rally around. HARPOOTLIAN: I think Hillary comes into the race, as she did in ’08 with all kinds of baggage… There’s going to be distractions, we saw just this week with the Wall Street Journal about payments...

Seventh-graders in all public and private schools in Rhode Island are now required to get the HPV vaccine. Starting this fall, seventh-graders who do not get the vaccine will not be allowed to attend school unless their parents seek an exemption for medical or religious reasons, the Providence Journal reported Tuesday. Tricia Washburn, chief of the office of immunization for the Rhode Island Department of Health, said the Centers for Disease Control found no safety concerns with the vaccine. "The bottom line is that HPV is the most sexually transmitted disease in the U.S." she said. "We are interested in...

RUSH: Craig in Scarsdale, New York. Great to have you on the program. Hello, sir. CALLER: Thank you very much, Rush. I can't believe all these reporters out there who are just dumping on Trump. It's unbelievable. They gotta go back 30 years to find something that can actually stick to this guy. RUSH: No, no. They have to go back 30 years to make up something. CALLER: I'm sorry? RUSH: They had to go back 30 years to make up something. CALLER: To make up something. And not just that. Why don't we go back 30 years and look...

The developer of the nation’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm installed the first steel foundation for the project off Rhode Island’s coast. The Sunday installation of Deepwater Wind Block Island Wind Farm came just in time for a Monday tour of the site that will include Obama administration officials, lawmakers and Rhode Island’s governor, among others. ADVERTISEMENT “It was a very big moment,” Jeffrey Grybowski, Chief Executive Officer of Deepwater Wind, told the Providence Journal shortly after watching the first foundation’s installation from a boat. The company had hoped to install the foundation on Thursday, but the weather did not...

Using powerful computer simulations, researchers from Brown University have identified a material with a higher melting point than any known substance. The computations, described in the journal Physical Review B (Rapid Communications), showed that a material made with just the right amounts of hafnium, nitrogen, and carbon would have a melting point of more than 4,400 kelvins (7,460 degrees Fahrenheit). That's about two-thirds the temperature at the surface of the sun, and 200 kelvins higher than the highest melting point ever recorded experimentally. The experimental record-holder is a substance made from the elements hafnium, tantalum, and carbon (Hf-Ta-C). But these...

Mayor de Blasio is a big fan of presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders — because the Vermont senator is a proud “Democratic socialist.” [Snip] De Blasio was quick to correct CNN’s Carol Costello after she called Sanders a “socialist,” telling her the senator is a “Democratic socialist.” “I think there’s a lot to like in that title,” he gushed.

Governor’s races in South and Midwest could be lost if party brand becomes too liberal. Centrist Democrats were wiped out in the 2014 elections and in their absence emerged a resurgent liberal movement, embodied most recently by the surprisingly competitive presidential campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. But the suddenly ascendant left — its populist overtones becoming part of the mainstream Democratic pitch — is worrying Democrats who want to compete on Republican-leaning turf. The party lost every competitive gubernatorial and Senate race in the South last year. And Democrats didn’t fare much better in the heartland. Now, as Bernie...

When headstones on the graves of fallen servicemen crack or fade with age, they're hauled away to be honorably destroyed. Then the Department of Veterans Affairs replaces them. But at veterans' cemetery in Rhode Island, an employee who was supposed to be taking care of the graves pillaged more than 150 granite headstones, many of them still inscribed with the names of the veterans. Then he took the markers home to build a floor for his carport. When investigators arrived at Kevin Maynard's house in Charlestown, R.I., this spring, they came upon an eerie scene, according to a federal affadavit:...

Hillary Clinton’s favorable rating has sunk to a new low as that of her 2016 rival Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) has doubled since March. A Gallup poll released Friday demonstrates that the share of Americans with a favorable view of Clinton has declined from 48 percent in April when she first announced her presidential campaign to 43 percent today. Meanwhile, Sanders is enjoying an incredible surge; the Vermont senator’s favorable rating has doubled since Gallup tested it in March, jumping from 12 to 24 percent. Unfortunately for Clinton, her unfavorable rating has been rising. The share of Americans holding...

For the first time in national history, a Rhode Island native son is running for President: Lincoln Chafee. “Stumbling” is more accurate, since shortly after declaring an exploratory committee, he fumbled into making himself a full-fledged candidate, and all the campaign finance hoopla which accompanies it. A one-term Republican US Senator, then one-term Independent Governor, Chafee entered the 2016 Presidential Election as a Democrat. Confused? Cable news program Common Sense openly derided his ambitions: “Are you kidding me?” MSNBC took his campaign seriously enough, asked him serious questions, and Chafee already looked like a deer in headlights. Joining the repeal...

Narragansett police on Tuesday released a 911 call made after an explosion on Salty Brine State Beach. A Waterbury, Connecticut, woman was injured in the blast. A family member said she was thrown about 10 feet. The caller tells the 911 operator she doesn't know exactly what happened, but that the injured woman needs help. Caller: "Hi, I'm at Salty Brine Beach ... The rock, like, fell on her." Operator: "The rock fell on her? At Salty Brine? Do you know if they're pinned under the rock?" Caller: "I heard a bang. People are saying that the rocks exploded." Operator:...

Education remains separate and unequal nearly everywhere in the United States, but Confederate-flag-waving Southerners aren’t responsible for the most racially divided schools. That title goes to New York, where 64 percent of black students attend schools with few, if any, white students, according to a recent report by the Civil Rights Project. In fact, the Northeast is the only region where the percentage of black students in extremely segregated schools — those where at least 90 percent of students are minorities — is higher than it was in the 1960s. Schools in the South, on the other hand, saw the...

PHOENIX—Bernie Sanders is unaccustomed to being heckled by protesters. The self-identified democratic socialist was caught off guard here Saturday when African-American and Latino activists jeered him at Netroots Nation. Sanders’ inability to control the audience – he tried to shut them up and then he tried to yell over them – underscores his broader struggle to expand his appeal and highlights why his summer surge is unlikely to last. The huge crowds Sanders draws are overwhelmingly white, and polling consistently shows that virtually all of his support comes from whites. After Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two contests on...

It’s time to draft Al Gore: If Democrats want to win, it’s clear neither Hillary nor Sanders is the way The presidential election is still sixteen months away, but this much is clear: Hillary Clinton is a vulnerable candidate. Since announcing her candidacy in April, Clinton’s stature has steadily slipped. Things got even worse this week. We learned, first, that Bernie Sanders eclipsed Clinton in small, individual donations, which is an indicator of popular support among likely voters. Second, and more problematic, the newest AP poll revealed significant weaknesses among Democrats on a host of issues, including trust, character, and...

<p>When headstones on the graves of fallen servicemen crack or fade with age, they're hauled away to be honorably destroyed. Then the Department of Veterans Affairs replaces them.</p>
<p>But at veterans' cemetery in Rhode Island, an employee who was supposed to be taking care of the graves pillaged more than 150 granite headstones, many of them still inscribed with the names of the veterans. Then he took the markers home to build a floor for his carport.</p>

Donors have given just $30,000 to Lincoln Chafee’s Democratic run for president, leading him to acknowledge that Democratic competitor Bernie Sanders is filling the role he hoped to play in the 2016 contest. Chafee lent his campaign $364,000, according to federal campaign finance filings. The former Rhode Island governor trails by a wide margin in fundraising. The campaign for Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton said it raised $45 million since mid-April, while Sanders, a Vermont senator, has raised $15 million since he joined the race in late April. “I always thought that there was fundraising potential for an honest progressive...

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. (WPRI) -Police and firefighters have responded to Salty Brine Beach for a report of an explosion. The Department of Environmental Management confirms that they received reports of an explosion on the beach and a person injured at about 11:15 Saturday morning.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is not a fan of anyone who disagrees with him about man-made global warming. And at an event hosted by environmentalists, he made it clear just how much he doesn’t like skeptics. “But, this vast denial apparatus that propagates the false doubt, that props up the phony science, that gets these yahoos who can’t survive … peer-reviewed scrutiny onto Fox News, onto the cable shows, saying that their scientists, they create an artificial conflict about this and that’s why I think there’s doubt,” the Rhode Island Democrat told attendees at a League of Conservation Voters event in...

<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tensions are building inside and outside the white marble facade of the U.S. Supreme Court building as the nine justices prepare to issue major rulings on gay marriage and President Barack Obama's healthcare law by the end of the month.</p>

Republican senators criticized the Bush administration Wednesday over its policies in Iraq, Iran and the Palestinian territories, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's first testimony on Capitol Hill in months exposed her to a tough grilling from some members of her own party. "I don't see, Madame Secretary, how things are getting better. I think they're getting worse in Iraq, they're getting worse in Iran," Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., told Rice as she appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Rice also had a tense exchange with moderate Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., over the pace of progress toward Israeli-Palestinian...

The Republican field is crowded, which implies that primary voters have little information about where some of the candidates stand. That is particularly the case this season, with a few relatively unknown contenders who lack legislative experience or a long history of campaign contributions that would allow researchers to precisely identify where they stand on the liberal-to-conservative political dimension.However, one characteristic all candidates share is that they have active and popular Twitter accounts. And as I showed in an article published earlier this year in the journal Political Analysis — now freely available online as an Editors’ Choice article —...

Greg Nash Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) has proposed a bill to automatically register Americans to vote, fresh off of similar calls by Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton. “Today, too many politicians are trying to make it harder than ever for citizens to make their voices heard at the ballot box,” Cicilline said in a statement on Wednesday. “The Automatic Voter Registration Act will protect the right to vote and expand access for eligible voters across the United States. I thank my colleagues who have co-sponsored this important legislation that helps to expand one of our most essential rights as...

Earlier today, the New York Times clucked its tongue over Marco Rubioâ€™s â€śpenchant for luxury,â€ť embodied primarily in the purchase of an $80,000 â€śspeedboat.â€ť One manâ€™s luxury is another manâ€™s â€¦ fishing boat. The Rubio team sent Dylan Byers a link to the model of the boat Rubio bought, which ainâ€™t exactly a yacht: But while Rubio did indeed spend $80,000 on a boat, the vessel in question is not the glamorous â€śluxury speedboatâ€ť the Times article portrayed. It is, in fact, an offshore fishing boat.On Tuesday, Rubio spokesperson Alex Conant sent POLITICO a link to a website showing...

So Linc Chafee is in the race. This brings the number of contenders up to four. You have an embittered, kleptocratic and entitled Social Security recipient; you have a sex-obsessed, corrupt septuagenarian Socialist; you have a big city machine Progressive; and you have the Wonder-Bread-and-Velveeta pragmatist. Of this crew, the only one that is a real contender is Martin O’Malley. But the real reason this bunch of northeastern Progressive white guys are in the race is to give the illusion that Hillary is not cruising to a coronation. There is undoubtedly some hope, too, that inevitable debates with one or...

Well, this is a new one.While announcing his candidacy for the highest office in the land, newly minted Democratic presidential candidate and former Rhode Island senator and governor Lincoln Chafee made the bold case for … the U.S. to switch to the metric system?Bloomberg's Dave Weigel was there: Chafee, a Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat, gave a brief and chipper address that called for America to re-engage with "international community" with diplomacy and "symbolic" moves. That meant everything from barring campaign donors from becoming diplomats, to allowing Edward Snowden to come home without punishment, to bringing America into the Metric system."It doesn't take long...

This Providence Journal report doesn’t say so, but the jihadis’ beheading target was Pamela Geller. “Court complaint: 2 Mass. terror suspects met on R.I. beach to plot beheading,” by Amanda Milkovits, Providence Journal, June 3, 2015: WARWICK, R.I. — Two Massachusetts men under surveillance by terrorism investigators met with an unidentified third person on a Rhode Island beach in Sunday’s rain to discuss a plot to behead people in another state, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court Wednesday.The plan that Usaamah Abdullah Rahim and David Wright shared with the third person changed early Tuesday morning, when Rahim...

An armed man in his 20s being surveilled by the FBI counterterrorism unit was shot and killed by an FBI agent and a Boston police officer in Roslindale this morning, according to Boston Police Commissioner William Evans. Evans said the suspect was wielding a large military-style black knife. FBI Special Agent in Charge Vincent B. Lisi is at the scene, and Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh is expected as well, FBI spokeswoman Kristin Setera told the Herald. Dozens of police officers have swarmed the small shopping plaza and officers are seeking surveillance video from a nearby Dunkin' Donuts, employees said....

An armed man in his 20s being surveilled by the FBI counterterrorism unit was shot and killed by an FBI agent and a Boston police officer in Roslindale this morning, according to Boston Police Commissioner William Evans. "He was on foot, under surveillance," Evans said. "The officers have been surveilling him and again they wanted to speak to him ... and he turned and our officers gave several commands for him to drop the weapon and unfortunately he came at the officers and they did what they were trained to do and that's never an easy decision for any officer...

A man with ties to the Bay Area was shot and killed by police in Boston on Tuesday. Officials say the suspect was being followed by the Joint Terrorism Task Force and was wielding a military-style knife at officers. Officials told NBC News the officer and agent had been investigating whether the man, identified as Usaama Rahim, had become radicalized by ISIS-inspired social media messages. The man’s brother, who is from Oakland, is asking for prayers. Back on the East Coast, the case remains under investigation.

"....At a rainy press conference near the crime scene, Commissioner Evans described the man as in "mid 20s", travelling on foot, and carrying a black "military-style knife". Some US media have reported the weapon as a machete. The suspect was taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The two officers are in hospital to be examined for stress, but did not suffer physical injuries, police said...."

The man fatally shot by anti-terrorism officers in Boston on Tuesday and the suspect arrested Tuesday night in Everett had conspired to kill a police officer, according to two law enforcement officials briefed on the case. “We believe the intent was to behead a police officer,” one official said Wednesday morning. “We knew the plot had to be stopped. They were planning to take action Tuesday.” (snip)They had a brief exchange near a bus stop, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation, before Rahim lunged with the knife. The weapon was more than a foot long with a...

A man arrested in connection with a terror investigation in Boston will be in federal court Wednesday. David Wright was taken into custody at his home in Everett Tuesday afternoon, hours after a Boston police officer and an FBI agent shot and killed a man who was under 24-hour surveillance by terrorism investigators in Roslindale. According to CBS News, Wright and the man killed, 26-year-old Usaama Rahim, were communicating about attacks in the U.S. and that’s why he was arrested. Investigators are continuing to look for other people both men were communicating with. Wright will face federal charges in U.S....

Former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee will officially enter the presidential race on June 3, a source with knowledge of his plans told POLITICO. He’ll make the announcement in a speech he’s scheduled to deliver next Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. at the George Mason Center for Politics & Foreign Relations in Arlington, Virginia. Following the announcement, Chafee will travel to New Hampshire on June 4 for a previously scheduled event with local Democrats in Grafton County.

Rhode Island health officials are blaming dating apps, such as Tinder and Grindr, for a spike in syphilis, gonorrhea and HIV cases in the state. Syphilis cases have spiked 79%, while gonorrhea has risen 30%, according to data from 2013 and 2014. New cases of HIV increased by 32%. "These data send a clear signal that despite the progress we have made in reducing STDs and HIV over the years, there is more work to do," state health director Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott said in a statement. Officials say the spike there follows a national trend. "High-risk behaviours include using social...

Washington — An alliance of Asian American groups on Friday filed a federal complaint against HarvardUniversity, saying that school and other Ivy League institutions are using racial quotas to admit students other than high-scoring Asians. More than 60 Chinese, Indian, Korean and Pakistani groups came together for the complaint, which was filed with the civil rights offices at the Justice and Education departments. They are calling for an investigation and say these schools should stop using racial quotas or racial balancing in admission. "We are seeking equal treatment regardless of race," said Chunyan Li, a professor and civil rights activist,...

Twenty-seven senators want President Obama to block federal agencies and contractors from asking job applicants about prior criminal convictions. The senators, including 26 Democrats and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), want Obama to take executive action to "ban the box," referring to a question on job applications that asks if an applicant has any convictions. "We ask you to require federal contractors and agencies to refrain from asking job applicants about prior convictions until later in the hiring process," they said in a letter to Obama on Monday. "This policy would eliminate unnecessary barriers to employment for all job...

University of Rhode Island campus police will start carrying guns Friday, making it the final public university in the nation to arm its officers. The move to arm police came after a false alarm in 2013, when some students in a lecture hall thought they heard someone say they had a gun, setting off a panic on URI’s bucolic campus in South Kingstown. While campus police arrived at the scene in less than a minute, it took about five minutes for armed police from South Kingstown to arrive. No gun was ever found. […] A student government survey of URI...

The fallout from the “Deflategate” report released Wednesday remains very much up in the air (sorry), with most informed opinion pointing to at least a several-game suspension for quarterback Tom Brady. The media coverage of the report has focused largely on the highly-qualified language of its conclusion (“more probable than not” that Patriots staff cheated, and that Brady “was at least generally aware”), rather than on the far more damning details of the report. Patriots (and Brady) apologists like to point to this language as an indication that the report doesn’t meet the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard of proof,...

The world’s first nuclear powered aircraft carrier was moved into its birthplace dry dock at Huntington Ingalls’ Newport News Shipbuilding this weekend as part of the ongoing inactivation process. The aircraft carrier, USS Enterprise (CVN 65), was moved Saturday from Newport News’ Pier 2 to Dry Dock 11, where the super carrier was constructed over 60 years ago.

Happy International Workers Day, the perfect occasion to write about Bernie Sanders, an actual Socialist running for President. The jokes fairly assemble themselves, mostly along the lines of: Sanders is far from the first Socialist presidential candidate, he’s just the first to admit it. You may assemble your own snarky rejoinders as the cranky 73-year-old gears up a challenge to Ms. Inevitability, Hillary Clinton. But once the chuckles fade, it is worth noting that Sanders brings some wild cards to the table. None of them suggest strongly that he will be the nominee, but they do suggest that he could...

Former Sen. Lincoln Chafee said he is not convinced Hillary Clinton will be the presidential nominee for the Democratic Party. Clinton faces a primary challenge from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and potentially Chafee himself. When asked about Clinton being pushed further to the left, Chafee brought up the scandals surrounding the Clinton Foundation and lack of accomplishments. “I would argue that between what’s happening internationally in her tenure as Secretary of State, no real accomplishments, and now these new allegations coming out about the Clinton foundation and the book coming out next week. These are real,” Chafee said.

Was TWA Flight 800 shot out of the sky? As a former pilot, that is a question I get asked about all the time. I’m no conspiracy theorist, but let’s be clear: Yes. I say it was. And I believe the FBI covered it up. LOOK BACK: REPORTING THE CRASH OF TWA FLIGHT 800 ON JULY 17, 1996 There are many reasons to disbelieve the official explanation of what happened to TWA 800 almost 19 years ago, on July 17, 1996, off the South Shore of Long Island. There’s hardly an airline pilot among the hundreds I know who buys...

Former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee said Thursday on CNN that he's running for the Democratic nomination for president, just a week after announcing he formed an exploratory committee, his most definitive statement he's made toward formalizing a 2016 campaign. "Yes, that's why I'm running. Because I feel strong about where we're going as a country," Chafee told CNN's "New Day" on Thursday, when asked why he's been so critical of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. Chafee was asked by CNN's John Berman in the context of having not formally declared his presidential campaign. Chafee spokeswoman Debbie Rich said Chafee did...

Hillary Clinton might have a new headache. On the eve of her presidential campaign launch, Lincoln Chafee, a former U.S. senator and governor from Rhode Island, announced Thursday that he is exploring a run for the Democratic presidential nomination. And unlike other potential Clinton challengers, Chafee appears to be spoiling for a fight.

Lincoln Chafee, a former governor and senator from Rhode Island, says he's exploring a run for the 2016 Democratic nomination. On a new web site, Chafee, who served as an independent as governor and a Republican in the United States Senate, says he's concerned about "international instability, especially in the Middle East and north Africa." "Throughout my career, I exercised good judgment on a wide range of high-pressure decisions, decisions that require level-headedness and careful foresight," he added. "Often these decisions came in the face of political adversity. During the next weeks and months I look forward to sharing with...

Few proposals in Governor Raimondo’s budget have sparked a more heated debate than her proposed “Obamacare tax.” The tax – technically, a “health reform assessment” fee – is the mechanism she’s settled on to pay for the state-run health insurance marketplace created to implement President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. The federal government paid the startup costs for HealthSource RI – to the tune of nearly $170 million at last count – but it’s up to the states to figure out how to pay to keep it operating going forward. And that means the state has to come up with its...

On top of an $18.9 million Defense Department grant doled out in Sept. 2010, the Institute received $13.6 million from the Department of Education, according to USASpending.gov. In the 2009 federal budget, another $5.8 million was appropriated through the Department of Labor and the Department of Health and Human Services. The state of Massachusetts gave the University of Massachusetts $5 million, earmarked for the Institute. As a senator in 2010, current Sec. of State John Kerry waged an unsuccessful attempt to earmark another $28.9 million for the museum ... the $18.9 million Defense Department earmark was “funneled through the Defense...

Currently, 61 members of Congress have confirmed they will not attend the speech. Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) California Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) — “I am disappointed Speaker Boehner chose to irresponsibly interject politics into what has long been a strong and bipartisan relationship between the United States and Israel. As President Obama has noted, it is inappropriate for a Head of State to address Congress just two weeks ahead of their election. I agree that Congress should not be used as a prop in Israeli election campaigns,...

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island — The new director of Rhode Island's health insurance exchange is making a case for keeping the state-run marketplace, as some lawmakers are calling for its demise. HealthSource RI has served as a model among the state-run marketplaces. Most other states use the federal exchange. Director Anya Rader Wallack says Rhode Island can use the state exchange as a tool to innovate and control health care costs in ways it couldn't if it switched. Gov. Gina Raimondo supports keeping the program in Rhode Island. But some say it isn't worth it. A group of lawmakers, led by...